


Little Choices (it's always worse after it's better)

by Previously8



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, No spoilers for S3, Recovery, in which the author puts word in Peter Nureyev's mouth that they really need to hear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-27 06:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21387403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Previously8/pseuds/Previously8
Summary: Two broken space gays on their way to healing have a little chat.Juno can't sleep. He ends up in front of Peter's door, and the thief has just the right advice.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 15
Kudos: 137





	Little Choices (it's always worse after it's better)

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place ambiguously in S3, but it was written before the new eps came out, so no spoilers. 
> 
> Note: mentions of past abuse, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, and self-harm. None is explicitly described. 
> 
> Can you tell I've been having A Week?  
guess it's time to project on characters who actually have support systems I guess woooo

Juno woke up gasping for air. 

It was, unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence. The nightmares that he’d had since he was young—the same ones that Benten used to wake him up from—and lots of much newer, more creative ones, had seen an increase since they left Mars. Sure, missions were going well, and being on the wrong side of the law was doing some good for his trust in the universe…

But the nightmares never seemed to stop.

Juno wanted to punch something. Hell, Juno wanted someone to punch him. This was so stupid, all of it. Finally, he was in a relatively stable place, with a decent team who had his back—and now was the time when his psyche was tripping him up?

He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks. 

When he tried to sleep again, though—pain, panic, fear—Juno opened his eye again. He resigned himself to the fact that he was not going to be able to go back to sleep anytime soon, got out of bed, and pulled on a sweater. His bunk might have had climate control, but the empty halls of the ship only had the survivable minimum.

His feet led him out into the dark halls, never silent thanks to the humming of the working ship beneath him. This was a new habit for him—walking, at night. 

He wanted a drink, or several—enough to get him forgetting the feeling of hands on him, pulling tearing, soothing. Hell, he wanted something a lot stronger than a drink—but he’d kicked that habit for good almost seven years ago. Sure, he still wanted it, but not nearly as much as he wanted to not fuck everything up. 

Too late, he supposed.

There was liquor on board—not much, though, and nothing that he could down and forget about. It was communal, and a missing bottle would probably (definitely) be noticed. He should have picked up his own, at the last port. He had had the chance—but things had been going so well. He’d been nearly happy. The night terrors were barely an object, able to be handled. 

Why did everything always get so much better before getting so much worse?

Juno could list his other vices—flip through them like a catalog in his brain, page after page of ways to escape the heaviness in his bones, the crawling of his skin, the itch under his scalp, the whispers in his ears… Lots of them were accessible. Lots of them were unnoticeable. Probably. 

He had a knife—just sharp enough to make the blood run—stashed under his mattress. 

That thought—and the images, the remembrance of a sting of pain and quick relief—were enough to stop Juno still. No, he wasn’t going down that avenue tonight. He hadn’t—he’d wanted to but hadn’t—done that in years. He turned resolutely away from the hall that lead to his cabin, heading anywhere—just away—

He didn’t realise where he was going until he was standing in front of Nureyev’s door, ready to knock. 

This wasn’t a good option, he told himself. This was stupid. Nureyev needed to sleep, and besides, just because they were, well, together, now, didn’t mean that he had to put up with Juno’s messy bullshit. 

Diamond never had.

The traitorous thought is like a jolt of pain through him. The nightmare, which had just about been locked away, comes back to him all at once—not just Diamond, though he could feel how his cheek burned from an remembered slap, and his hips ached from remembered bruises, but other situations, his mother, everyone—

Juno could see his raised hand quaking. He balled it into a fist and stared blankly at the door in front of him. 

“Fuck,” he said under his breath, and lowered his arm. 

Of course, because Juno had never been anything resembling lucky, that was when the door cracked open. 

Nureyev stood there, peering out at Juno, wearing a silk bathrobe but with none of his make-up on. “Juno?” He asked, “is everything alright?”

“Fine,” Juno spat. He didn’t mean for it to sound venomous, but he could feel his shoulders draw up, hunch, to hide. “It’s fine. You need to sleep. I didn’t mean—I should go back to my room.” 

“It doesn’t seem fine,” Nureyev told him gently. “I wasn’t sleeping, anyway. What’s wrong?”

Juno shook his head and peeled his back off the wall. “It’s late,” he argued, though his feet wouldn’t move. Nureyev gave him a patient smile. Juno looked away from his face. “Look, it was just a nightmare. It really doesn’t—doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“I assure you, my dear, you’ve done nothing of the sort.” Nureyev stepped into the hall, leaving his door open, and took one of Juno’s shaking hands in his own. Juno couldn’t help but look back up at Nureyev’s face, scared of what he would find, but grateful for the distraction. Nureyev blinked at him slowly. “Now, would you like to come in?”

Juno’s mind blanked, briefly. A passing thought, one from an era long enough ago that it usually didn’t bother him, asked if he was allowed to say ‘no’. Juno’s stomach churned, but he reminded himself that this was different—this was Peter. Peter, whose thumbs were still rubbing gentle circles on the back of Juno’s hands. 

Before he had to figure out what to say, Peter clarified, “that wasn’t a proposition, Juno.” Juno’s eyes flicked back to him. He just looked—sad. Not disappointed, or angry, or resentful. “I was wondering if you would like some company, right now, nothing more.”

The thought was strangely appealing. Juno found himself nodding along. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

He followed Peter back into his room—neater than Juno’s, but with his things still moderately scattered. They took their seats on the bed, next to each other, backs against the wall and shoulders pressed together. Peter was still holding Juno’s hand. 

“Would you like to talk about it?” Peter asked softly. 

“No.” Juno didn’t look at him. “I don’t know.”

“We don’t have to. You don’t have to.”

“I know that,” Juno said. It bubbled to his lips all the same, pressing against the inside of his teeth. He admitted the thing that was really bothering him about this whole fucked up situation, “I just—I thought I was, I don’t know, better already.” He shrugged and closed his eyes. “And then, what, one fucked up nightmare later I’m in the middle of deciding whether to slit my wrists again? Like—” Juno choked on his words and swallowed. Peter didn’t interrupt. “Am I not past this already? I thought I’d gotten over these stupid thoughts—gotten over some of the stupid fucked up shit that I’d been though. And then here I am, just—breaking down.” He took a deep breath. It shuddered only a little bit on the exhale. 

He hadn’t meant to be so candid, so honest. He hadn’t mean to lie either, but it was one thing to tell someone you had a nightmare about your trauma, and another to admit that the good, old-fashioned suicidal ideation hadn’t gone away yet. 

Peter didn’t answer immediately, and it was enough time for Juno to feel anxious—to wonder if he said something wrong—before he did. 

“Recovering from trauma isn’t easy, Juno,” he said softly. “You know that already.”

“I know, I’ve heard all of the “healing isn’t linear” and “healing is a choice” speeches,” Juno said impatiently. “Haven’t I—I chose to get better. To be better. So why isn’t it—why doesn’t it feel like it?”

Peter hummed. “I think you’re wrong.” 

Juno turned his head to look at him. He watched Peter’s face in the dim room. “Wrong?”

“Healing isn’t a choice,” Peter told him, “it’s every choice. You don’t get to wake up and decide that none of the old memories, triggers, or traumas have any hold—but you make thousands of little choices—not engaging in old habits, for example, every day. Discounting thoughts. And eventually, it won’t feel like any choice at all, because it’s become routine.” Peter squeezed his hand gently. “Being here, telling someone—that’s a choice you made, but it’s just one.” 

Juno squeezed back. 

“That—makes sense,” he said slowly, processing. “I guess—I made a choice not to do any of that shit a long time ago. I thought that was the big moment, the day I was better. But—I’ve had to keep making that choice over and over.” Times when he was offered a little white pill while undercover, times when he could have gotten into a fist fight, times when he said no to going home with a dangerous stranger—he had been making those choices. “I wish it wasn’t so hard.”

“I wish it wasn’t, either,” Peter said. “But we live on, don’t we?”

Juno felt brave enough to meet his eyes across the small distance and found there something intense. Peter’s eyes were burning, aching. There was no pity in Peter’s expression, and Juno remembered that Peter had had his own fair share of trauma and difficult experiences. Healing was something that Peter was doing his best to do, too. 

He leaned forward and pressed his lips gently to Peter’s. 

Live on anyway?

“Yeah, I guess we do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!! Thanks for reading!
> 
> or hit me up on tumblr [@everythingsdifferentupsidedown](https://everythingsdifferentupsidedown.tumblr.com)


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